The biggest goal the Enid News & Eagle had at the beginning of the project was to find a way for people to value their product. They also wanted to find a balance between sharing too much information for free and getting the audience to click through to content on the website.

Project Lead:Violet Hassler, Digital Communications Coordinator. Hassler has worked at the the Enid News & Eagle for 23 years. She is primarily responsible for digital content and layout and social media interaction. You can connect with her via Twitter.

Hear from Hassler about her newsroom’s experience:

Enid had great success with interacting like a human and inviting users to help them inform the world. When it came to interacting like a human, the audience responded very well the casual tone presented with most of the posts. This appeared to allow for a more relaxed conversation the audience appeared to love. This photo post talked about a carnival up at the local mall and reached a lot of users. It generated a well above average engagement rate and an impressive amount of comments, likes and shares. Another post also focused around a unique event and received above average likes.

The newsroom experienced even greater success with inviting users to help them inform the world. One way Enid employed this strategy was by inviting users to share information involving different police matters. This post invited users to share information about the statewide 911 system. Another post was also very successful with an even higher engagement rate and asked their audience to share information about a police suspect. Other examples of this strategy were a post that invited users to share information on an event to help feed the neighborhood, local Wheel of Fortune participants, and a OG&E scam.

A strategy that their audience didn’t respond to was inviting and valuing interaction. With this strategy, the paper focused on inviting their audience to interact with them in different ways online. This post focused on a way for the audience to interact via an online poll and generated below average metrics. Another post discussed Facebook setting changes and how to make sure the audience could continue to get the Enid’s posts.